Inside Story

Photo exhibitions that are part of the Ginza landscape

"We are trying to present exhibitions
that take advantage of the special
characteristics of Ginza itself. "
(Mieko Wada)

RING CUBE held 14 exhibitions in the year after it was founded. With reports of "unique photo exhibitions " spreading by word-of-mouth, the cumulative visitor count passed 100,000 on September 13, 2009. For some exhibitions, there has even been a line of people waiting to get in.

"Among the many exhibitions, I think that "Daido Moriyama Photo Exhibition S' " in December 2008 was a particularly RING CUBE kind of event, " commented Mieko Wada, a RING CUBE operations staff person from the Personal MultiMedia Products Company Planning Office. She went on to explain that this was the exhibition that best embodied the RING CUBE concept of "A place to realize mutual growth and nurture Candid Photo Culture by building connections between customers and Ricoh and between customers themselves. "

The Gallery Zone curtains were left open to use the Ginza 4-chome landscape as background. Not only that, the works themselves were sandwiched in clear acrylic sheets so the Ginza landscape reflected off the surface, causing photograph and landscape to merge into one image. With the photographs overlaying a Ginza landscape that totally changes from morning to noon to night, the result was images that themselves changed hour by hour. "A particular characteristic of this exhibition was that visitors tended to stay for a long time, " recalled Wada.

"Daido Moriyama himself said, 'I am looking forward to seeing how my photographed monochrome world looks in the glass-walled space of RING CUBE above the colorful, fashionable streets of Ginza,' so he was quite excited about visiting the exhibition, " mentioned Wada. Following the S' exhibition, the second RING CUBE exhibition of Daido Moriyama's work was "GINZA/DIGITAL, " with all the photographs being taken with a GR DIGITAL or GX200. Photographer solo exhibitions at RING CUBE got a symbolic start with the works of Daido Moriyama, the number one practitioner of the Candid Photo*.

*Candid Photo: An image quickly captured in that instant when the heart stirs.

With the fragrances of Tahiti

"We are trying some totally new
kinds of photo exhibitions, such as
combining still images and video and
using fragrances in the gallery
space. " (Misako Seto)

Personal MultiMedia Products Company Planning Office member Misako Seto works with Mieko Wada on RING CUBE operations. She said, "Looking back on the challenges we have faced, a distinctive example was the Masato Terauchi Photo Exhibition "Tahiti: Intervals of Land and Sea, Day and Night, " where the exhibition space was scented with several aromas. " That exhibition was held in February 2009. "The Gallery Zone was segregated into three areas, with the photographs being displayed in spaces scented with vanilla, tiare (a flower), and coconut fragrances. In addition, 'day and night' was one theme of the exhibition, so brightness was adjusted with the curtains to evoke the 'day and night of Tahiti' in the exhibition space. The effect was quite popular for creating the feeling of being in Tahiti, " said Seto. For this
exhibition, photographs also faced outward from the gallery windows so people could see them when they looked up while waiting for the light to change at the Ginza 4-chome intersection.

The notice for Masato Terauchi Photo
Exhibition "Tahiti: Intervals of Land
and Sea, Day and Night " (Click to
enlarge)

Gallery space during the Masato Terauchi photo
exhibition. Photographs are displayed in such as
way that the viewer seems to be looking into the
bottom of the cube. (Click to enlarge)